tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Story of a Masterpiece first appeared in The Galaxy magazine in January 1868. It was not reprinted during James’s own lifetime, and its next appearance in book form was as part of the collection Eight Uncollected Tales of Henry James published in New Brunswick by Rutgers University Press in 1950.

A Potrait of a Woman

The Story of a Masterpiece – critical commentary

The Painting

There are two interesting points of note here. The first is the direct reference to Robert Browning’s well known poem, My Last Duchess which features an Italian Duke showing somebody a portrait of his former wife who he has murdered. Baxter refers to his earlier portrait of Marian, somewhat ironically, as ‘My Last Duchess’ – because he was engaged to her at the time it was first started. The irony is lost on Lennox, who does not know the full truth of his wife-to-be’s past at that point in the story. Though Baxter does not have Marian murdered, but he does break off their engagement because he discovers she has a dubious reputation.

The second item of interest is James’s attempts to present different interpretations of paintings in a literary text. We as readers of course have no image to see, but he offers a persuasive account of how the earlier and the later portraits of Marian might reflect the painter’s attitude towards his model – or are perceived by their principal viewer Lennox according to his attitude to the sitter. When Lennox is enamoured of Marion he thinks the portraits wonderful, but as soon as he suspects her of deception, he views them as revealing her duplicity. This is a little precursor of modernist critical theory at work on the subjective nature of perception. And of course the magical literary trick is that there is no original portrait against which any interpretation can be judged. We only have the painting as described in the text.

And of course the fate of the painting – hacked to pieces because of the corruption it reveals to its owner – is a powerful precursor to the famous scene ot the end of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) when Dorian destroys both his own idealised image as a young man, and himself as the older and corrupt reality.

The ending

The story originally ended as described in the synopsis below. The painting is destroyed, and we are left in doubt about the outcome of the wedding – though on the whole it seems likely that it will still take place, even though the destruction of the portrait suggests that Lennox has seen a glaring weakness in Marian’s character. But James was prevailed upon by the editor of The Galaxy magazine to add the following paragraph to make the ending more explicit for his readers:

I need hardly add that on the following day Lennox was married. He had locked the library door on coming out the evening before, and he had the key in his waistcoat pocket as he stood at the altar. As he left town, therefore, immediately after the ceremony, it was not until his return, a fortnight later, that the fate of the picture became known. It is not necessary to relate how he explained his exploit to Marian and how he disclosed it to Baxter. He at least put on a brave face. There is a rumour current of his having paid the painter an enormous sum of money. The amount is probably exaggerated., but there can be no doubt that the sum was very large. How he has fared – how he is destined to fare – in matrimony, it is rather too early to determine. He has been married scarcely three months.

James was only young at the time, and would understandably feel compelled to comply with the wishes of an editor. But it is interesting to note that he re-introduces the element of doubt into the conclusion by saying ‘it is rather too early to determine’ the outcome of the marriage.

The story certainly fits well with others written around the same time which feature the duplicity and fickleness of women. This is certainly not an isolated instance. In his very first story A Tragedy of Error (1864) an unfaithful wife hires someone to kill her husband; in The Story of a Year (1865) a young woman vows to be faithful to her fiancé whilst he is away at war, and breaks her promise within a very short time; and in A Landscape Painter (1866) a young woman accepts a man’s proposal of marriage, then later reveals that she does not love him and has only married him for his money.

The Story of a Masterpiece – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Story of a Masterpiece – plot summary

Part I

Rich widower John Lennox becomes engaged to poor but pretty Marian Everett in Newport during the summer holidays When they return to New York he visits his friend Gilbert and finds Stephen Baxter painting a portrait he calls ‘My Last Duchess’ which looks surprisingly like Marian. Lennox offers to buy it, but someone else has already bought it.When he tells Marian the news, she reveals that she met Baxter in Europe. Lennox then arranges for Baxter to paint Marian’s portrait.

It is then revealed that Marian became engaged to Baxter whilst in Europe, but both being poor, they agreed to wait until there was an improvement in Baxter’s fortunes. But Baxter overhears a story of Marian’s having been indiscreet with another young man. He checks the story with Mrs Denbigh and discovers that there have been two indiscretions with men who were both rich and handsome. Baxter breaks off his engagement to her.

A year and a half passes before they meet up again in New York, at which point Baxter has gotten over his anger and disappointment. He now finds Marian shallow, and reveals to her that he has become engaged to a girl he left behind in Germany.

Part II

The commissioned portrait is eventually finished. It is a faithful likeness of Marian, but when Lennox contemplates it he feels that it reveals her essential heartlessness. Baxter feels some sympathy with Lennox, but when they inspect the portrait together Lennox is suspicious of Marian and Baxter’s past connection. Baxter admits that he was once in love with her – and Lennox convinces himself that it is Baxter’s disappointment at being rejected by Marian (as he believes) that shows through in the portrait.

Baxter does not betray Marian by revealing the truth of the matter. Lennox then questions Marian about her past with Baxter, but she is evasive. Nevertheless, she is worried that he might be disenchanted with her.

As the day of the marriage draws closer, Lennox feels more ill at ease. He sees the portrait on public display, alongside ‘My Last Duchess’ which he now thinks inferior. He contemplates buying his way out of the engagement by giving Marian all his money and escaping. The portrait is delivered to his home on the eve of the wedding, whereupon he hacks it to pieces.

The Story of a Masterpiece – characters

Further reading

Biographical

Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.
The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2013

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Story of a Year was first published in The Atlantic Monthly in March 1865. Its next appearance in book form was as part of the collection The American Novels and Stories of Henry James, edited and with an introduction, by F.O. Matthiessen. published by Knopf in New York, 1947.

It is the first of four stories James wrote with the American Civil War as a background. The other tales are Poor Richard (1867), the ghost story The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868), and A Most Extraordinary Case (1868).

The American Civil War 1861-1865

The Story of a Year – critical commentary

It is difficult to understand this tale, except as a rather simplistic plea for male heroism and altruistic self-denial in the face of female inconstancy. John Ford is giving his fiancée every encouragement to form other relationships even before he departs for the war – and the moment he does join the Army of the Potomac, that is exactly what Lizzie does. And although she is pulled between her regard for both men, she is ultimately not faithful to her vows to John – just as his mother predicts.

The ambiguous ending is one which James would use many times in his later fictions. We do not know if Lizzie will really hold out against Mr Bruce or not – just as we are not quite sure what will become of Olive Chancellor at the end of The Bostonians or Isabel Archer at the end of Portrait of a Lady.

The American Civil War

What is not in doubt at all is the sympathy that James obviously felt for those who were conscripted into what was a very bloody battle. All his stories with a Civil War background emphasise the suffering and hardship of the participants. And although James himself was a Yankee with sympathies for the Unionist cause, he was alert to the general and national sense of suffering caused by the dispute.

Because we now think of James as a modernist writer, and bracket him conceptually (and chronologically) with other experimental writers of the twentieth century such as his friends Joseph Conrad and Virginia Woolf, it is amazing to realise that he was writing whilst the American Civil War was actually taking place. The introduction to this tale flags up both the background of war which had gone on for three years, and (in a very proto-modernist manner) the outcome of the story itself.

My story begins as a great many stories have begun within the last three years, and indeed as a great many have ended; for, when the hero is despatched, does not the romance come to a stop?”

James himself was conscripted into military service, but was excused duty because of a back injury he had sustained whilst pumping water to put out a fire in Boston. Nevertheless, he visited wounded soldiers in hospitals and recovery centres (rather like Walt Whitman) and it is worth noting that all these tales feature suffering and death on the part of all the participants.

There is a scene in his novel The Bostonians which illustrates this very well. In one of the pivotal meetings of the novel the heroine Verena Tarrant takes the hero Basil Ransom to look round Harvard University in Cambridge, just outside Boston. There in the Memorial Hall he looks on the names of those who have died on the opposite side.

The effect of the place is singularly noble and solemn … It stands there for duty and honour, it speaks of sacrifice and example, seems a kind of temple to youth, manhood, generosity. Most of them were young, all were in their prime, and all of them had fallen … For Ransom these things were not a challenge or a taunt; they touched him with respect, with the sentiment of beauty. He was capable of being a generous foeman, and he forgot, now, the whole question of sides and parties; the simple emotion of the old fighting-time came back to him, and the monument around him seemed an embodiment of that memory; it arched over his friends as well as enemies, the victims of defeat as well as the sons of triumph.

The Story of a Year – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America [$13.95] Amazon US

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Story of a Year – plot summary

Part I.   Lieutenant John Ford and his fiancée Lizzie Crowe contemplate his departure to the Civil War in Virginia. He encourages her not to sentimentalise his memory if he is killed. He wishes her to enjoy herself whilst he is away, and he also thinks their engagement should be kept secret. When they reach home, his call-up papers have arrived. John nevertheless reveals the engagement to his mother, who thinks Lizzie is shallow and that her son deserves a batter class of wife. John asks his mother to keep their conversation secret.

Part II.   Whilst John is away Lizzie enjoys a blissful sense of being at one with the world. Mrs Ford keeps a watchful and critical eye on her, and feels that the girl is patronising her because she only reads portions of John’s letters. Gradually, Lizzie begins to think less of he fiancé..

Part III.   Mrs Ford engineers a visit for Lizzie to Mrs Littlefield, where she dresses up and meets Mr Bruce at a dance. A relationship between them flourishes. He puts her onto the train back home, where they learn via newspapers that John has been severely injured in the war. When Lizzie gets back home Mrs Ford announces that she is going to her son and will nurse him.

Part IV.   Whilst Lizzie waits at home she is conflicted over her feelings for John and Mr Bruce. She becomes pale and ill, and even fantasises about committing suicide..She goes to stay with the local doctor’s housekeeper Miss Cooper, and they are visited by Mr Bruce.

Part V.   Lizzie is on her own when news arrives that John is worse and expected to die. Then Bruce arrives and proposes to her. She tentatively accepts him, but then John unexpectedly recovers and is sent home. Bruce arrives, but she turns him away. She re-unites herself with John, but she is kept away from him, because he is so fragile. Mrs Ford is also ill from her nursing efforts. John finally summons Lizzie, tells her he is going to die, and gives her his blessing for her relationship with Bruce. John dies the next day, and Bruce arrives to claim her. She bids him farewell, but he refuses to go.

The Story of a Year – principal characters

Further reading

Biographical

Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
Buy the book from Amazon UK
Buy the book from Amazon US

Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.
© Roy Johnson 2013

tutorial commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux first appeared in The Galaxy magazine for June 1873. It was not reprinted until 1919 as part of Travelling Companions along with six other early Henry James stories, published by Boni and Liveright in New York.

Portrait of a Lady in a Yellow Shawl

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux – critical commentary

This is one of many stories James wrote about art and artists – particularly painters. The premise of the tale is simple enough, and represents a traditionally romantic view of art. Harold Staines is handsome and rich, but he lacks artistic talent. M. Briseux on the other hand is poor and unsuccessful – but he has both artistic insight and skill. Briseux is also a man of principle who turns down an offer of money in order to complete the portrait. The poor but talented artist is something of a cliché which has had a persistently vigorous life ever since it first came into being.

It is echoed here by the complementary cliché of the woman who chooses the poor hero over the rich wastrel. The woman in the portrait refuses Harold Staines when he challenges her, and throws her lot in with the poor Briseux instead. She thereby loses her comfortable position within the Staines family, and is forced to go back to her (poorer) home.

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1864—1874 – Library of America – Amazon US

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux – plot summary

An un-named narrator is looking at paintings in the museum of a French provincial town. The gallery has acquired The Lady with a Yellow Shawl, an impressive work by the best-known local artist, Briseux. The narrator sees a woman in the gallery looking at the picture very intently, and suspects her to be the original subject of the portrait. Later in the day he meets her in the town and she tells him her story, which forms the remainder of the narrative,

She has lived under the protection of Mrs Lucretia Staines, an old friend of her mother. Mrs Staines has a handsome but shiftless son Harold, who decides to become an artist. They all travel to Rome, where he makes copies of old masters. Then he proposes to her, which at first is a delight to her, but then becomes a burden. Mrs Staines however approves the match.

They move on to Paris, where Harold makes copies in the Louvre, The woman delays the marriage, but then challenges him to paint her portrait, after which she promises to settle a date. Harold struggles with the portrait, and one day whilst he is absent from his studio during a sitting, the young painter Briseux appears and denounces the painting as rubbish.

He is hungry and destitute, but very confident about his own talent. She offers to give him money, but instead he finishes off the portrait.

Harold returns and is angry at this interference with his ‘work’: He tells her to leave the studio, but she sees the shabby figure of Briseux as a positive saviour, and that of the handsome Harold as a negative life force. She refuses to move. Harold says she must chose between them: she chooses Briseux, who then finishes off the painting.

She parts from the Staines family and goes back home. Briseux exhibits the picture at the Paris salon and it is deemed a masterpiece which establishes his reputation.

.

The Sweetheart of M. Briseux – principal characters

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Further reading

Biographical

Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Jonathan Freedman, The Cambridge Companion to Henry James, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Merle A. Williams, Henry James and the Philosophical Novel, Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Judith Woolf, Henry James: The Major Novels, Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

Other works by Henry James

The Bostonians (1886) is a novel about the early feminist movement. The heroine Verena Tarrant is an ‘inspirational speaker’ who is taken under the wing of Olive Chancellor, a man-hating suffragette and radical feminist. Trying to pull her in the opposite direction is Basil Ransom, a vigorous young man from the South to whom Verena becomes more and more attracted. The dramatic contest to possess her is played out with some witty and often rather sardonic touches, and as usual James keeps the reader guessing about the outcome until the very last page.

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What Masie Knew (1897) A young girl is caught between parents who are in the middle of personal conflict, adultery, and divorce. Can she survive without becoming corrupted? It’s touch and go – and not made easier for the reader by the attentions of an older man who decides to ‘look after’ her. This comes from the beginning of James’s ‘Late Phase’, so be prepared for longer and longer sentences. In fact it’s said that whilst composing this novel, James switched from writing longhand to using dictation – and it shows if you look carefully enough – part way through the book.
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The Ambassadors (1903) Lambert Strether is sent from America to Paris to recall Chadwick Newsome, a young man who is reported to be compromising himself by an entanglement with a wicked woman. However, Strether’s mission fails when he is seduced by the social pleasures of the European capital, and he takes Newsome’s side. So a second ambassador is dispatched in the form of the more determined Sarah Pocock. She delivers an ultimatum which is resisted by the two young men, but then an accident reveals unpleasant truths to Strether, who is faced by a test of loyalty between old Europe and the new USA. This edition presents the latest scholarship on James and includes an introduction, notes, selected criticism, a text summary and a chronology of James’s life and times.
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Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

© Roy Johnson 2013